Saying that this is almost as good as your self portrait is not a compliment. I think you intended it to be, but the recipient would not see it that way. Your self portrait is good too in its own regard, but no one's art is better, per se, than another artist's. It's all relative to the individual potential.

I used Photoshop CS3 and an Intuos2 6x8 tablet.If you want to go low on costs, I suggest you buy the Bamboo Fun one, it's really cheap and has a great performance! I've used it long enough to recomend it hehehe.

Mind if I try to make one of myself? It's really inspired me.... Who knows, it might come out horribly (I don't have too much experience with digital art), but I thought it would be good to ask beforehand.

Hey DhazGuten, can you tell me how to do the shading/shadows or point me to a link that shows me how? I'm working on some Wind Waker stuff in Illustrator and I can get my pics colored and everything...I just need to put on the texture (thanks C-Ion) and the shadows...

uhm... I don't really think I can actually explain >how< to do the shading O_ofor the textures... there are lots and lots of tutorials around deviantart, just use the search and check them out, find out which feels more comfortable for you